[QUOTE=ggking7;2081699]I’ve been buying cheap CDs from eBay lately and I’m wondering what I can do to make sure a CD I receive isn’t counterfeit. Does anyone have experience with this?[/QUOTE]

You must be a very “lucky” to get any faked media. While almost all chinese manufacturers are faking MID codes of media, CD-Rs with fake ATIP are extremely rare. As far as I know only a few types of fake CD-Rs were made with these faked ATIPs:
TY (manufacturer: Princo and some other smaller companies from Hong Kong)
Infodisc (Princo)
Mitsui (some unknown company from Asia)
Ritek (some unknown company from Asia)

These media are now extremely rare and I doubt you can find them even on ebay .
The only fake CD-R media which are still made are those made by Gainfast with MBI ATIP code.

And here I thought you were referring to prerecorded CDs:o Good sources for fairly priced CD-Rs are Meritline, Rima, Supermediastore, et cetera. But I’ve found that the cheapest prices are from the brick and mortar stores when they put them on sale. Office Depot, Officemax, Circuit City, Best Buy…

[QUOTE=ggking7;2081733]I just read about ATIP on Wikipedia a bit. Are you saying I should use a program that can read and display the ATIP data to check for fakes?[/QUOTE]

No, because the ATIP is the same on both legit and fake media
But don’t worry - fake CD-R media are really extremely rare. But as gamma1 said, you should buy media rather from Amazon.com, because some media sold on ebay are absolutely crap and you don’t know what you are buying in the case of cheap no-name chinese stuff.
BTW which media did you on ebay lately? What is their ATIP and where are they made? You can check the ATIP with Nero CD DVD Speed

Compare the packaging, labeling and silk-screening on the disc with that of a “store-bought” version (of course this requires you to buy another one somewhere else). It is best to stick with reliable retailers – again I will mention Amazon, good prices and reliable. This is not to say you can’t get the real thing on eBay, but if it’s too cheap to believe, then…

If you live in the USA, there are a lot of walk-in stores (Best Buy has a good selection) that will always carry the real thing.

[QUOTE=ggking7;2081901]Do you think there’s no reliable way to tell just by looking at the CD?[/QUOTE]Unless the fake is lousily made, no.
Fortunately, fake audio CDs are often lousy looking.
Best thing to do is to buy from reputable sources, and NEVER on Ebay.